Is College Working?
blogs.harvardbusiness.org
blogs.harvardbusiness.org
From this vantage point it's comparable to taking a year off to travel (except 4X longer) or taking a couple of years off to volunteer. The question then becomes, can I afford it?
An interesting excercise is thinking about creative alternatives with similar costs. Say a parent was willing to give their 17-18 yr old child 100k in capital (maybe also help getting financed) + a 4 year stipend to start a business. Every cent must be reinvested. I'm not saying go start Microsoft. Maybe buy an ice cream franchise, mobile dog wash or double up & spring for an existing small business. Would they emerge 'more likely to succeed' at 22 then they would have otherwise?
- The rolodex factor.
- The fact that people that go to Harvard are already smart, and they would be successful anyway.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322.pdf
I'm not sure if this is a generally available link; I am using it from a Stanford IP which may have purchased access. The paper is Dale and Krueger, "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables."
The problem is (particularly under the current US system) is that it is very hard to distinguish between likelihood to succeed & likelihood of going to a good college @ 18.
There are also feedback effects like mingling with those likely to succeed.
But 4 years out of college, I can say that the salaries of my friends with no college degree and significant marketable skills are much, much higher than the salaries of my Amherst friends with English, history, or foreign language degrees. Like 4x higher. What you study seems to make a far bigger difference than where you go to school.
Here's what I'm getting at: As per the article, parents who send their kids to an elite university to get a degree in creative writing aren't doing it because they're under the impression that they're getting vocational training, and nevertheless, it's probably a smart investment. Class cohesion is a pretty powerful force.
(Note: With all of this I'm not saying this is a good thing; just that social factors are as powerful as skills in determining at where someone falls in the economic ladder.)
But then I read the article, and it's always some sob story about average folks who went to college in a liberal arts field while making absolutely no attempts at establishing an independent career in the field or working outside of class on their trade. Then they get out, and they're a convenience store clerk or something.
They end up having the opposite effect on me, rather than confirming my biases.
Pick the things you need to learn to reach the goals you want. Go learn those things. Repeat and rinse. That may or may not mean formal schooling. It could mean mentoring, hands-on work, lots of book-reading, long seminars. There are lots of ways to learn.
Schooling is where they pick those things for you. What I keep getting from these articles is that most major institutions aren't very good at picking those things for you. That the selection of things to pick from are driven more by politics and happytalk than practical results for most of the students participating. There's no feedback between what defines a degree and what the actual perceived value is from those receiving one.
If I were you, I might go back, and I might not. That's kinda the point -- you're supposed to take ownership and actually do something. Failure to take ownership of your education is what leads to working at the chicken-plucking factory, not a lack of a degree.
That said, I don't think that college is this way for everybody. If you're disengaged in classes and primarily linked in to the social scene, then the value you get out of college is less clear. A degree is socially necessary for some jobs, so it's not entirely wasted time, but the price is steep.
Point being, college is like everything else: you get out what you put in. I wouldn't trade my college experience for anything (especially that $160k). Nothing is a panacea.
How would you demonstrate being smart and motivated without learning on your own? I mean, when I say "hey look at that smart and motivated person!" I'm saying that they're demonstrating learning new things to reach goals -- that they are motivated. Motivation doesn't exist without some kind of action to show for it.
I work with people who have varying degrees, from no college at all to PhDs.
What I find is that once you've spent that $160K, there is a tendency to feel like it was worth it. This is the same thing that happens during hiking: the goal seems completely pointless until you've spent all day (or multiple days) reaching it. At that point, you wouldn't trade anything in the world for it. I see the same thing from people with military experience, and I imagine the same thing happens for people who work in the Peace Corps.
There's nothing wrong with not knowing what you want and having somebody else pick it for you, aka schooling. But in that case, there should still be foundational goals: ability to survive in the modern economy comes at the top of the list. Any formal schooling that doesn't meet those needs fails, in my opinion (tying this back to the topic of the article)
It's hard to say objectively whether anything is worth it. However, I don't think that hiking and paying for school are that similar - with hiking, you put the work in up front, and with school, you receive the diploma (and ostensibly the benefits of 4 years of learning) before you even have to start paying back your student loans. That said, doesn't it say something if all those who have done it say it's valuable?
In any case, I guess the fundamental issue that I see is the relationship between learning and applicable skills. Picking up skills is certainly learning, but learing is not always economically valuable. Schools do not exist to create wealth in their students - they exist to pass on knowledge. If schools are not passing on real-world skills, they are not intrinsically failing, nor is the real world somehow broken. I value learing for its own sake and am actually willing to forgo some matarial comfort for it. I suppose it all depends on your definitions of success.
I will admit that if people are going to school with no clear path and no motivation, and expecting to come out on the other side more employable, that's a problem. But again, it's a problem of expectations, not institutional reality.
I understand the premise of college, however except for certain highly specialized or certified jobs I don't really see the value for money in it. I see the value of going to law school to get a law degree and help in passing the bar, but I don't see the value in taking English if you plan to get a career out of it... unless perhaps you desire to teach English.
I mean I'm working to become a novelist, and the best advice I ever saw was to find something that interests you and then write about it. I mean all my favorite writers come from such bizarre fields like a ESA scientists, Cops, Soldiers, Forensic Investigators, Physicists, Economists, Mathematicians, etc. Not a single one (that I'm aware of) even touched English, yet all are full time writers.
I mean a perfect example of this is Cory Doctorow. He dropped out of four universities, became an electronics right activist and worked for the EFF before quitting and becoming a full-time writer. No degree in english, no creative writing in university.
IMO I see this happening in IT. The classic path to money was joining the economic elite, however 2/3 of the biggest names in IT never graduated university. Dell dropped out of University of Texas; Jobs I believe dropped out of Reed College and only Gates actually graduated, however from what I remember his path through Higher Education wasn't typical of the economic elite as he got fascinated by computers and did his own thing instead of what his parents planned for him.
Wozniak went back to finish his degree, and Ballmer did not join Microsoft until after he finished his.
1) Because of the deluge of college students. Many college educated people get jobs at Best Buy and retail outlets. Some of my high school friends are in situations like that. They assumed they would get a good job out of college, but that's what they get by getting a liberal arts degree and partying for 4 years. A 30,000-40,000 per year tuition, all down the drain.
2) Because a lot of job performance is measured by the market (i.e. startups). Getting a prestigious college degree doesn't necessarily get you the job needed and a lot of times you'll get beaten out by someone at a "less prestigious" school.
3) Many people getting a college, medical, or law degree should realize that if they're not at the top of their class, it's not necessarily guaranteed for them to get a great job. For a less prestigious university, it's even more so the case.
4) All of this will lead college counselors and the next generation of parents to advice people to get the most value for their money: i.e. a good education for a good price (i.e. not going to Harvard for Engineering, etc).
Do you seriously think going to Harvard for engineering is a bad idea? Why do you think so? Would it still be a bad idea if the student enjoys Harvard's financial aid and is paying just a few thousand dollars a year (earned through part-time work) to attend Harvard?
(I'd really like to know, so I'm inviting any onlooker with knowledge of this issue to reply.)
I understand that Harvard's Math department is pretty impressive too (near the same level as MIT/Princeton/etc).
Many people think that Harvard's math department is the best in the world.
(Not challenging the assertion, just curious who.)
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/index.php?f=143
and those participants include many young people from various countries who have participated in the International Mathematics Olympiad.
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/mat/s...
Princeton is first and Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley are tied for second. Harvard is always mentioned as one of the top Math depts. more so than MIT in my experience.
There's an inmeasuable quality of ambition that cannot be quantified on paper. I personally know many of my friends who have gotten into "prestigious" Universities who are not doing as well as some of my other friends.
It's the same reason why Nobel Laureates come from various universities. If the measuring tool to get into Ivy Leagues were a perfect indicator, these professors would be considered a fluke.
I've come to realize more and more that tests are inherently flawed.
If you get an MD you are pretty much guaranteed a job, even if you go to a Caribbean school. As long as you can get a license, someone will hire you.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education. We want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
Then again, I got, and at least for now, am still holding a job, so, hindsight 20/20, neh?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275258 (Wall Street Journal)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115158 (Financial Times)
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/penn-and-teller-bullshit-c...
One of the biggest differences between the US and German system is that almost all American students attend the same type of high school, which theoretically should prepare you to go to a university and the curricula are usually general. Also it's important to know that the US system is mostly controlled on the local level, rather than the federal level for public schools, so a school in one city can be very different than a school in another city or state.
English is the international business language but unfortunately at least two-thirds of the world struggles to communicate correctly. Just as US outsourced mundane work in operations and computing, US & UK can support businesses elsewhere with their spoken language at home. There is a huge opportunity here.
There are also masters-level professional programs in teaching English as a second language, which are usually quite well designed.
Creative writing.... Now that would be something. I haven't actually read anything from these magical fairy people, but someone writing well about new and creative ideas would be amazing!
What I had in mind was more of messages and docs required for a product itself.
I had a personal experience building this quite successful app iRead on facebook and I would most always mess up the grammar or the tone in the news feed, which would then go through repeated corrections from people in the US.
People who have formally studied creative writing with English being their mother tongue would be able to message better.
This doesn't seem to help the situation. (1) Now, experienced people with families to support will (theoretically) be out of work longer, and (2) Raising the bar on "practical" experience raises it for everyone, still making jobs hard to get.
No. We do not have a model for all education. That's centralized planning, which doesn't work. What we need to re-think is what activities we encourage by financing. We heavily finance 4 years of student activity that, by this author's account, does not prepare students for providing for their own needs after school. In short, we're creating 22 and 24-year-olds without the chutzpah that a common street hustler has at age 15. And we're paying lots of money to do it.
Education has always been about goals. I love the fuzzy goals like appreciation of arts, understanding of various philosophical schools, sensitivity to world cultural differences -- things that you absolutely need but are hard to measure. Problem is, you can subsidize things that are hard to measure. There's no quality control. There's no standard to say whether institution X is doing any better or worse than institution Y.
People, young or old, need to be able to adapt to find a spot in a complex society where they can provide value to the rest of us in such a fashion that we formally thank them -- that is, we give them money. That's job #1. That's something we have a public interest in advocating.
More worrisome is that groupthink that colleges instill. It's always there under the surface, as in this quote from the article:
One newly-minted MBA said that if worse comes to worst, he'll stay at home and look after the baby he and his wife are expecting...."provided," the reporter remarked, "his wife still has her job."
If worse comes to worse he'll actually raise his own kid, instead of having somebody else do it for him. The sacrifices we must make.
I don't dig on standard MBA-style fancy-lexicon-of-big-words-business despite undergraduate work in business/project management, and all the wealthiest people I know are dropouts or never attended. But for me, the making money thing is about problem solving, and then getting some of the value you created (which is just another, specific kind of problem solving). Means I can do love and money at the same time.
Beyond that, however, Finnegans Wake is just the most incredible piece of art I've ever seen. If you like solving puzzles, that's a book for you. It's the hardest book on the planet, and it's beautiful. A single sentence in that book blows away most literature I've read, period. Understanding it in its entirety is near-impossible. That's why I'd take that over the billion dollars.
(Mind you, I'd take a billion dollars over most other things. I like earning money a lot.)
I think that the proper route is to learn both science and art. I don't know that much about various individual fields of science, though I'd really like to, but I know that there's definitely an art to the way math works, and I'm sure it extends to other stuff too.
Oh, and a severe note of warning: Finnegans Wake is extraordinarily tough to read. It's online, so you might want to take a look at it before you go out of your way to read it.
Yes, that's a good reason to get a literature major. But if you paid in blood to go to a top-tier school that doesn't seem all that much better at teaching literature than a lot of other reasonably good schools, and are paying huge sums to do it, and expect excellent job prospects, then you may be making a mistake. Sounds like this isn't your case. But I get the impression this is pretty common.
What shocks me is meeting people who seem intensely focused on the rat race and appear to want to take on the world, but then get into Yale or whatever and decide to study something that is not exactly conductive to world domination. Then they complain. This...makes my brain hurt. I totally respect your choice regarding Finnegans Wake and the billion dollars. But surely the philistine who preferred the billion would not be better off with the English major. And surely he has no right to be surprised when he has trouble getting jobs as good as those of his engineering peers.